Learning how to reduce your repair and maintance for your Audi starts with understanding how the technician gets paid at most dealerships. The short answer is they get paid flat rate.
Sounds simple but it is not always so straight forward. In simple terms flat rate could be compared to a waitress that gets paid on tips.
Flat rate is a system that pays the technician by the job. If it pays one hour to complete a state inspection and the technician can get it done in 30 minutes they still get paid one hour. If for some reason that technician takes 1.5 hours to complete the inspection he still only gets paid one hour.
The idea is to have a good mix of jobs that can get done faster than the time it take to actually make the repair. Those jobs make up for the jobs that you would normally lose time doing.
Cash jobs usually pay double what a warranty repair pays. So as a technician they best scenario is to have a easy warranty job and up sell a large list of cash work especially when it is slow. Because when business is slow it is possible to be at work 40 hours and only get paid for 25 hours.
The opposite also is possible, it is not uncommon to work 40 hours and get paid for 80 hours.
The tough part about flat rate is when business is slow . Basically the customers that show up make up for the ones that don’t.
Did you ever wonder why you dropped you car off for the free oil change and they did a entire work order full of repairs?
The answer is it was probably slow. When working at the dealer I have actually had the service manager hand me a job and tell me to hit it for all it’s worth because it is a certified pre owned car and everything is covered. The other option would be to stand around all day and not get paid. Sad but true.
Service managers also usually get paid based on the profit of the shop. Some service managers will actually not buy necessary shop equiptment because it will in some way affect their pay chack. That also holds true with their good will policy and their decision to cover or not cover your repair when your car is out of warranty.